StorageCraft Recovery Environment part four – CrossPlatform

StorageCraft Recovery Environment part four – CrossPlatform

This post is part four in a series about the StorageCraft Recovery Environment. Be sure to check out parts one, two, and three.

So you want to know more about the StorageCraft Recovery Environment – CrossPlatform do you? Well, you’ve come to the right place. If you’re familiar with or have used the StorageCraft Recovery Environment in the past, you know it’s an intuitive and powerful tool for restoring entire systems to the same or to new hardware. The process is fairly straight forward. You boot off of a CD/DVD or USB drive attached to the target system. Now we’re offering this same functionality built upon a Linux platform. Yes, you heard right, I said “Linux”. What does Linux have to do with a Windows recovery tool you might ask. The answer is that StorageCraft will be adding support for Linux systems to our effective and very successful backup and recovery solution for Windows.

For several reasons we began developing our applications to run on Linux about two years ago. Coding on this project has been rigorously tested as an alternative platform for our Recovery Environment based on WinPE. In short, this is a CrossPlatform version of our Recovery Environment tool intended to provide the same utility for Windows systems as it will soon provide for Linux systems. Currently the StorageCraft Recovery Environment – CrossPlatform supports Windows backup images. Linux backup images will be supported later this year.

The CrossPlatform Recovery Environment can be downloaded as an ISO directly from our website. Simply burn this ISO to a CD/DVD or USB drive and boot from this drive. The CrossPlatform Recovery Environment will load a customized version of Linux as well as automatically load a library of standard hardware drivers. After the OS is loaded, the StorageCraft Recovery Environment – CrossPlatform application will launch with the same familiar tabs, tasks, and wizards as the legacy Recovery Environment. The user interface has a Linux feel due to the cosmetic differences between Linux and Windows. However, if you’re an experienced StorageCraft user, you’ll quickly recognize familiar landmarks.

In addition to the normal Recovery Environment functionality, StorageCraft has also included several add-on tools including: a web browser, an FTP client, an antivirus program, a PDF viewer and more. The intent is to provide our customer with access to resources (e.g. KB articles, remote files, virus scans) which complement the StorageCraft Recovery Environment processes. Access to the command line via terminal is also available for Linux experts. We expect that more features will be added to the CrossPlatform Recovery Environment over time and we welcome your feedback.

Yes, we believe this is great news that StorageCraft will be releasing a CrossPlatform version of ShadowProtect which supports both the Windows and Linux platforms. We’re very excited about this news.

The current release of the ShadowProtect Recovery Environment – CrossPlatform is a positive step towards supporting the Linux OS. Currently this CrossPlatform Recovery Environment is intended only for backing up and recovering Windows OS systems (including Windows 8 and Server 2012). Another release will have the complete tools for backing up and recovering both Linux and Windows systems. I can tell you that this later release will be out before the end of the year. Until then, thank you for your kind comments and we we’re looking forward to providing you with more information about this exciting update in the near future. Check back with us again soon.

Hi Steven
at 6 august 2013 you wrote:
” Another release will have the complete tools for backing up and recovering both Linux and Windows systems. I can tell you that this later release will be out before the end of the year.”

But now we are already in 2014.

when we can have this “complete tools for backing up and recovering both Linux and Windows systems” ?

Yes, you have pointed out the travails of being both a Techie and a Marketer, namely predicting software release dates. We both know how fast technology changes these days. What with Microsoft updates, new hardware (and the associated drivers), the constant flow of Linux distros, and StorageCraft’s penchant for getting everything perfectly aligned before a release and my job as a Technical Marketer job becomes nigh impossible. I apologize for getting the date wrong, and will post more information about the upcoming software release as soon as I get it.

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